“Every day, I try to see through the patient lens, and I ask: what can we do to change this broken system? To deliver healthcare in a way that treats people with the dignity they deserve? Will I do better tomorrow?”
This oncology clinician is passionate about patients being able to get the care they need. But every day he observes how social determinants of health, like access to housing, transportation or childcare, prevent this from being possible. “Is it ethical to start chemo for a patient who has no home to return to?” he contemplated. “Who was this system designed for?
As our conversation unfolded, I found myself more and more curious about why he cared so deeply about improving healthcare, so I inquired.
“I’m Lebanese,” he began. “I grew up in Beirut during the civil war. People died in the streets every day and human life didn’t matter to those doing the killing. This is why I chose to go into the medical field.”
His openness brought me to tears. “When I reflect on what I see in healthcare today, I find myself wondering: how much better are we, really?” he said. “But everyone can do something small within the sphere of their control. Back home, my focus was education. Today my focus is each human being in front of me and remembering that we all have a story.”
The Waiting Room
Back home in Lebanon, the war was at its worst
in grades five, six, and seven
We slept inside the cold, cinder block stairwells
of a nearby building
Ten of us would fight for the spot
closest the candlelight
to finish our homework in the flickers
Staying focused kept us calm
‘cuz our teacher didn’t give a damn
why the math paper couldn’t get done
Before we’d leave for class each morning
mom would hug us in the kitchen, one-by-one
look you straight in the eyes, saying
what her words never would
(they knew killing a child
would send the strongest message)
Every day when I look in the mirror
I brush back my dark black curls
catch a quick glimpse of the scar
on the right side of my forehead
Many times as the snipers tried, this
was the closest they came
Having gotten good at dodging shots in the streets
hightailing, hill to hill, I’m among the lucky
Unlike too many patients I care for today
Most have to travel a long distance
only one bridge from there to here
four hours, on a good day
One patient, a single mom of three
has breast cancer
Couldn’t drop her kids to school
in time to make her appointment so
they sit with her in the waiting room
“Sorry, ma’am – we don’t allow children
and our policy clearly states
you’ll forfeit your appointment
if more than twenty minutes late”
The look in her eyes
no different from mom’s
those mornings in our Beirut kitchen
as she gazed her silent goodbyes
Every day, I try to see through the patient lens, and I ask: what can we do to change this broken system?
She was very proud of her daughter and has hopes for “a bright future that’s as pain free as possible”
“I’m trying to focus on doing little things to make people feel better during everything that’s going on in the world,” she told me.
“It’s hard to see others struggle,” she said. “How can I help with their struggle without struggling myself?”
"I'd tell her it's OK to be loud...it's OK to challenge and to bring all of you into these spaces where no one looks like you..."
“I'm continuously questioning: did I do it right?" she said. "I’ve always done a good amount of second-guessing, but I’m re-learning how to show up differently.”
“It’s weird,” she said. “This is one of the biggest accomplishments of my life, but it doesn’t feel like it.”
"It changed me; It changed the way I look at life," said this woman about her profound experience during her pregnancy.
“It’s been more challenging than normal lately,” she said. “I’m only one person. It's a struggle for me to say no, but I can’t do everything that’s being asked of me right now.”
"I've been processing how to make the most of the small amount of life we have to live," said this physician.
"I've been processing how to make the most of the small amount of life we have to live," said this physician.
“I like feeling small,” he told me. “Nature has always made me feel small.” He described the sense of wonder that feeling gave him.
“I feel like I have decision fatigue,” she told me. It was normal for her to make many choices at work, but COVID had dramatically increased the number of medical decisions she had to make at home.
“I know ‘vibe’ is kind of a nonspecific term, but I think about people’s vibes all the time,” he said.“ Sometimes you come into a room and it’s just off.
This physician discussed being the only one in his practice network with expertise in patients with a specific type of chronic pain.
“Our constituents are uniquely affected by the pandemic,” they said. This poemee was an educational psychologist who spoke about how much they missed working in person with med students, healthcare staff, and medical educators.
"I grew from the experience – though I think it aged me 10 years!" This is how a resident described a turning point with a specific patient when he recognized how burned out he was.
Although he had been through many stressful experiences in his life and recently, he always held onto his positive outlook. He took particular care to use words intentionally, paying attention to their connotations, so that his positivity extended to those that he interacted with as well.
“There’s a constant feeling inside that I should be doing more,” she said. “But I also want to be kind to myself and recognize all that I’ve given.”
These members of the Wellness team in the Department of Neurology at the University of Colorado each spoke about the importance of community and connection.
She said she wanted a poem about the importance of CPR. As both a nurse and a CPR instructor, she spoke about how the rhythms of certain familiar songs helped her students internalize the rate of compression required.
He brought the tools of mindfulness and self-care to medical students, many of whom had been studying all this past year, 10 hours a day, day after day, in isolation.
The pandemic had forced this woman to slow her life down drastically. Before, she’d travelled around every month for work, never stopping, working hard because she cared about her job. The slower pace created by social distancing had reminded her to cherish everything that life had to offer outside of work.
He had recently lost his father to COVID-19 and was reflecting on forgiveness. For the majority of his life with his father, they did not have a positive relationship. However, in the last three years of life, his father lost his memory and his personality changed into someone who was loving and kind.